Sessions & Windows

Each Vaste window shows one file. To read several files side by side, open each in its own window. When you close windows, Vaste records which files they showed and where you were, so you can reopen them later as a session.

Open more windows

Open a file in a new window in any of these ways:

• Press Ctrl + Shift + N.
• Select New window in the toolbar, or More actions (…) → New window.
• On the welcome screen, select Open in new window, or the window icon on a row of the Recent or Favorites list.

A new window always opens with a file: Vaste asks you to choose the file first, except from the Recent and Favorites lists. A new window appears at once and shows Opening with the file’s name until the file is ready. There is no limit on the number of windows. New windows open at 1280 × 800 pixels and cannot be made smaller than 800 × 600.

Each window works on its own. It has its own view, search, selection, and panels, and its own line index for its file. You can open the same file in two windows, for example to look at two parts of it at once. The window’s title is the name of its file followed by Vaste.

What windows share

Some changes reach every open window at once:

• Settings, including the theme.
• Highlighters.
• The recent files list.

Saved filters are read when a window opens. A filter you save in one window appears in the others after you close and reopen them. See Saved filters and alerts.

Bookmarks and the encoding you choose for a file are saved with the file, so any window that opens the file later uses them.

Restore your last session

When you close a window that shows a file, Vaste records that file in the session. The next time Vaste starts, it can reopen those files:

• With the Restore last session setting on, Vaste reopens them as it starts. The setting is off by default, in the General settings under Startup.
• With the setting off, the welcome screen shows Resume last session with the number of files, for example Resume last session · 3 files. Select it to reopen them.

Vaste reopens the first file in the current window and each other file in a new window; each window shows Opening with its file’s name until the file is ready. If a file no longer exists, Vaste skips it without a message. If the first file fails to open, a notification shows Failed to restore with its path. A file that fails in one of the new windows shows Failed to open with its path in that window.

A session holds the files whose windows you closed within 5 minutes of the last one. If you close a window and keep working in another for more than 5 minutes before you quit, the file of the first window is not part of the next session.

What a session remembers

For each file, a session remembers:

• The file’s path. For a compressed file, the path of the archive.
• The view, for example Text or Table view.
• Your position: the top line, or in Hex view, the top byte.

A session does not remember the search, the selection, open panels, or Grep view. For a zip archive with several files, Vaste asks again which file to open. If the file can no longer show a table, a saved Table view opens in another view.

These actions remove a file from the session:

• Close file (Ctrl + W).
• Opening another file in the same window.

Vaste records the session only when a window closes. If Vaste stops unexpectedly, the session is not updated. Vaste drops files closed more than 30 days ago from the session, and keeps the session in its data folder. See Data and cache locations.

Next steps

• Opening files: the welcome screen, recent files, and favorites
• Settings: turn on Restore last session